About Me

I'm just me - a solitary wanderer who trekked across much of the world and recently retired to a small farm in the Ozarks.
My checkered past includes time spent as an Army officer, high school teacher and principal, real estate broker, child protection worker and administrator, and social worker with the U.S. military.
Over the years I have resided in a variety of places including Missouri, Virginia, Okinawa, Kansas, Kentucky, and Arizona. I have also traveled to Germany, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Great Britain, Belize, Guatemala, Taiwan, Guam, South Korea, Vietnam, and numerous islands in the Caribbean - including Cuba.
I have ridden in a Russian ambulance, hitch-hiked across Moscow late at night, fought an ostrich, celebrated New Year's at a street party in Hanoi, and bicycled across the Caribbean. My travels have taken me to Ground Zero in Hiroshima, the Bolshoi Ballet, China Beach, and the White House kitchen.
The nine things in life that I am most proud of are my children: Nick, Molly, and Tim, and my grandchildren: Boone, Sebastian, Judah, Olive, Willow, and Sullivan.
Life has been very good to me indeed!

Friday, March 17, 2017

The Last Political Sacred Cow

by Pa RockCitizen Journalist

A
few days ago I came across the term "seven hated groups" while
researching a political incident. The term was meant to encompass a
listing of groups that smart politicians are quick to vilify as a
campaign tactic. As I nosed through the Internet looking for more
information on the make-up of the list, I found only two references to
the model which contained actual lists of groups - and while they were
similar to one another, they also varied somewhat in content. From that
base, as well as with a strong dose of personal opinion, I drew up my
own list of the "seven hated groups" and posted them in this space.

A
reader of that blog entry replied with a bit of counterpoint. She
inquired as to what I would see as the "sacred" groups most used for
political opportunism. Her query, of course, set me to thinking.

A
decade or so ago I would have said that the sacred cows of politics
centered on the elderly, idealized families, and Christianity, but now I
sense that the once-solid ground beneath those bulwarks of American
civilization has begun to erode.

Social Security, a
program whose intent was to keep old people out of the poor house, has
been around for nearly a century, and, until recently was considered to
be the "third rail" of American politics - something a smart politician
knew not to mess with. But now, after several years of a steady
conservative attack on Social Security (and Medicare), young Americans
have, by and large, become convinced that these social aids to the
elderly will be gone by the time they are old enough to benefit from
them, and therefore a drain on their incomes which will never be paid
back. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy inspired by politicians who are
motivated by their own self-interests and the interests of their
corporate overlords.

Now we are living in a time when
both Congress and the presidential administration appear to be very
focused on the demise of Social Security and Medicare. Old people are
no longer "sacred" in the political calculus that runs America. Many of
America's most economically fragile old people flock to the polls to
vote against their own self-interests. And as young Americans lose
interest in maintaining these social
safety nets for the elderly, the programs become easier to attack,
minimize, and ultimately eliminate.

The idealized
family - Ward, June, Wally, and the Beaver - never existed in the real
world, but it was given form by artists like Norman Rockwell and his
famous Saturday Evening Post covers - and a generation of radio,
television, and movie scriptwriters. It was the standard by which we
were all measured - and by which we measured ourselves. Politicians
knew that the term "family values" carried a certain amount of political
power and protection.

That has changed in recent
years, however, due in some measure to politicians who were seen as
standard-bearers for family values getting caught up in scandals, often
of a sexual nature, and America's shifting sense of what the term
"family values" actually means. As one example of that, the
righteous-sounding American Family Association, a stridently
homophobic organization, tries to usurp the notion of the idealized
family, but its values no longer align with those of the majority of
Americans. In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center now classifies the American Family Association as a "hate group."

In
the same vein, Christianity, once a safe and fertile field for
politicians to reap votes, is no longer seen as a solid block with
homogeneous issues. Christianity itself has splintered into hundreds
and hundreds of denominations, each with their own views on a myriad of
political and societal issues, and two other religious groups, Jews and
Muslims, as well as atheists, also serve to counterbalance any political
stance that Christianity might be able to effect. Add to that the
emergence of the most liberal Pope in history, and the "sacredness" of
Christianity as a voting block is further diminished.

So,
back to the question posed by the reader, if the elderly, idealized
families, and Christianity are no longer "sacred" to our self-serving
politicians, are there any groups left to which almost all politicians
genuflect?

I propose that the American political system
has one sacred cow left in the barn - and it's a hoary and extremely
dangerous old beast, one that roars in fiery indignation with only the
most infinitesimal of provocations - a beast that could ravage and kill a
political career with the ease and nonchalance of swatting a fly.

The
most sacred political cow currently chewing everybody's cud in America
is the gun lobby - and in particular the systemically insane National Rifle Association. The NRA has,
over recent years, pushed a crazy quilt of legislation nationwide to
arm more and more people and to allow those people to carry guns into
almost all public venues - except, of course, for the NRA national
offices. (What's safe in your local churches and taverns would be an
unacceptable risk within range of Wayne LaPierre or Ted Nugent.)
Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives did the NRA's bidding
once again and passed a measure which would allow "mentally
incapacitated" veterans to buy guns - a situation which will ultimately
lead to more veteran violence and suicides. But, hey, if the NRA wants it, what choice does a political weasel have?

The
National Rifle Association strong-arms legislation that results in the
bloody deaths of thousands of Americans every year, including innocent
little children. It is an organization that creates mayhem and carnage,
and then convinces stupid people that the way to avoid becoming a
victim of the NRA's loose gun policies is to arm themselves with even more guns.

The NRA is not about protecting anyone - the NRA is about selling guns.

The NRA is despicable, and to sleazeball politicians it is very, very sacred.

1 comment:

The NRA could at least drop the pretense of representing gun owners and admit they are a shill for firearms manufacturers.

It looks like the President and the members of Congress aren't going to take away Obamacare after all. If it passes the House Republicans who vote for taxing the poor and giving that money to the rich will be punished. This bodes well for Social Security.